Digital music sales decline for the first time since the dawn of the iTunes Store

The past 12 months has seen the first decline in digital music sales, since the iTunes Store was launched back in 2003. Digital track sales took the biggest hit, but a decline in album sales was a little more surprising reports Billboard:

Overall for the full year 2013, digital track sales fell 5.7% from 1.34 billion units to 1.26 billion units while digital album sales fell 0.1% to 117.6 million units from the previous year’s total of 117.7 million, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

As streaming music services continue to grow – including Apple's own iTunes Radio – it was perhaps inevitable that we'd begin to see such a change at some point. Numbers for streaming services aren't so easy to find, but with the likes of Spotify, Pandora, Rdio and Google to name but a few getting in on the action, there are some heavy hitters giving you access to more music for less money.

What about you though; did you shift to streaming from purchasing during 2013? Which service do you prefer?